


The Parenting Policies

by charab



Series: Stamp Of Approval [22]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Hokage Tower, Kiss on the Hand, M/M, Paperwork, kkir25
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-23 00:38:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11391735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charab/pseuds/charab
Summary: When some facts become inevitable.





	The Parenting Policies

**Author's Note:**

> Again, no excuses. Not so sure if I even had a point in this one. Anyhow. Enjoy!

The need for personal space was something that no one working as a shinobi questioned. Children of shinobi parents came to know from a very young age that it was strongly advised not to let anyone too close, even when it came to their family members. However, the occasional physical or verbal displays of affection were not frowned upon, but merely regarded as something that was needed to keep clansmen loyal to one another, and to maintain strong bonds between individuals as well helping the children to feel safe and accepted in their communities.  
  
Yet, there were unspoken rules when it came to showing affection in a physical way: one should not linger too close for too long, or letting just anybody see what was exchanged through a simple touch or a shared look. Nobody wanted to offer their precious people as obvious targets to outsiders.  
  
Of course, when it came to one certain Uzumaki boy, it was a small wonder that the beloved _Iruka-sensei_ had not been singled out on every single mission he had participated in. That or Iruka’s ribs not getting repeatedly broken instead of becoming merely bruised by the agonizingly affectionate hugs the blond messenger of mayhem had tackled him with over the years.  
  
Kami help him if the possible offspring of their future Hokage candidate ever decided to take after their father on that.  
  
“If you really want to drink that oolong warm I’d say now is the time for that,” teased a familiar low bass from the other side of the desk Iruka was seated by, thus snapping him out of his twirling thoughts with a blink.  
  
“Huh,” he said, and then promptly gave himself a mental scoff when there was a silvery eyebrow lifted teasingly at him.  
  
“Huh, he says,” Kakashi murmured absentmindedly and then glanced at the papers he had been holding before deeming that his attention was already decidedly elsewhere than the budget marginals for practice shurikens.  
  
“I never liked the echo in this room,” Iruka noted back without any malice put into it, and then proceeded to take a sip of the mentioned tea that sat on top of a rather tall pile of papers. While mulling the taste on his tongue, the tokubetsu jounin gave a look at the folder he had been browsing through before his mind had taken a detour. After a silent minute, he felt a pull of a persistent look on his face. “It’s rude to stare, you know.”  
  
“You were spacing out,” came the countering comment to the accusation. The bastard sounded amused.  
  
With a sigh, and some lament over the long night they had ahead of them with the unsorted paperwork, Iruka put down the folder and drank his tea. Then, while leaning from his seat towards the pot he had left within an arm’s reach, he let an amused smile tilt his lips. “Considering with whom I’m stuck in the office, I’d say that I’m allowed to lose myself on the road of life once in a while.”  
  
The answering grin that stretched the dark mask over the pale face was anything but serious. “Maa, if you wish to use that one then you have to come up with an original excuse as well. There are rules, you know.”  
  
“Saa, let’s see,” Iruka hummed in mock thought while pouring himself a new cup. “My train of thought was derailed by a small nine-tailed fox, and I had to pay him with ramen to get it back.”  
  
“Naruto, huh,” Kakashi muttered and then gave a passingly paranoid look at the scenery showing through the windows behind his back. His ANBU had not reacted to anything yet, but he set some of his senses on alert all the same. The boy had grown into a fine young man, granted, but Kakashi had learned many things from his time as Team Seven’s captain, such as not to assume that the three idiots were more mature than they had been at the age of twelve.  
  
“He’s not up to anything, so stop peering at the corners. You’re making me restless,” the tan tokubetsu commented dryly and directed an unimpressed look at his lover. Although, considering their current topic, he couldn’t help but give a few discreet looks around their immediate perimeter himself. There was wisdom in learning how keen their village hero’s hearing was when his favorite food was mentioned during a conversation. Then, a passing thought made him sigh and lean back on his seat, which in turn made the other man tilt the silvery-haired head in question.  
  
“What were you thinking?” Kakashi wondered lightly, and yet the frown he saw forming on his companion’s forehead made him stop smiling behind his mask.  
  
Regrettably, staring blankly at a half-empty tea cup didn’t fool anyone and he knew it. “Your father – was he affectionate?” Iruka finally asked, and winced a bit at how clumsily he had put out the question. Among shinobi there really weren’t many suitable words that could be used when prying on such private matters without it sounding like an interrogation.  
  
Fortunately, Kakashi had been spending time in their ranks long enough to distinguish information gathering techniques from honest curiosity. However, that didn’t mean he made it any easier. “Maa. What brought this up?” After the question, the pale man took his coffee mug and peered in it with casual interest. They both knew he had finished his drink half an hour ago, but that was a minor detail in his opinion. “Did the kids do something at the Academy again?”  
  
“Not this time, no,” Iruka chuckled and then cocked an eyebrow at the man looking at his mug. Seeing that the jounin wasn’t going to shift his focus to anything that had been said instead of staring at the stained china, the tokujo decided to help himself with some more tea before deeming his question being one of those that were left unanswered. As a member of their professional circles, and as a lover of one rather eccentric jounin, he had long ago accepted certain facts.  
  
“I do remember him giving me a piggy back ride, once or twice.” His voice chased out the silence that had once more settled between them, and the way how his companion lifted the dark eyes to stare back at him in obvious surprise made Kakashi smile wider behind his mask. If the smile turned warmer due to the memories this unexpected topic brought up in his mind, he wasn’t against it, as he reclined in a more comfortable manner in his high office chair. The gray eyes roamed fleetingly over the ceiling above their heads before the jounin continued. “He also had a habit of keeping me close, patting me on the head and such.”  
  
“I see,” Iruka surmised and glanced at the setting evening sun behind the large windows before giving a small smile at his partner.  
  
“What do you see?” Kakashi asked, eyeing the younger shinobi sitting before him.  
  
“That there really isn’t much difference between the fathers and sons of Konoha. Be it either the elite or the average,” the tokujo admitted, and leaned against the table with his elbows, the dark eyes looking at the cup he held in the tan hands. “Or any shinobi in general, I guess.”  
  
The Rokudaime gave a small pause at the sight he was seeing; the sliver of melancholy that had surfaced in the dark eyes of the man he had grown to cherish over the passing time, the posture that spoke of restless thoughts. Without a word, the jounin leaned over the table and tapped the wooden top next to the silent headmaster’s hands, thus snapping the other man back to present. “Tell me about your father, then.”  
  
A quiet sigh was breathed, and the room echoed with the passing caws coming from a flock of birds flying by before words took place. “He also had a habit of keeping me close. Probably not for the same reason as Sakumo-san might have had with you,” a quick grin was given to that small remark before Iruka settled to look at his hands as he reminisced the past. “I remember hugging him a lot of times. He smelt of bee wax, honey and tobacco whenever he had helped the neighbors to take care of the beehives.”  
  
Kakashi hummed in agreement at that, for he could as well remember the different scents of his father, as faint as the memories had become over the years. “The things that stick to the memory are curious, sometimes,” he noted calmly and chuckled a bit at a few other memories that surfaced in his mind. He had nearly forgotten many things, it seems.  
  
“Sandaime smelt of tobacco as well.” The words rang heavy as he said them, carrying the sense of loss Iruka felt the minute he thought of them. The silence of his companion pressed against his skin, making it erupt in goosebumps and he idly rubbed his wrist as he turned to gaze at the decorative scrolls hanging on the walls around them. “Curious how the memories mix sometimes.”  
  
“Maybe that’s why Naruto still loiters around you whenever he gets the chance,” the masked Hokage pondered and offered a wink at the questioningly staring tokujo. “You smell of a father figure. Or, well,” he thought aloud while carefully ignoring the blatantly baffled look directed at him over the table, “your scent is emitting the same kind of impression I would imagine Ikkaku-san having when he was around in the village. It can’t be the mere smell of ramen that keeps the brats coming to you for an advice.”  
  
“I’m not so sure if I should continue being in the company of a man who suggests that my personal odor is ramen,” Iruka countered, albeit weakly, for his brain was still stuck in some of the addressed issues. “I don’t recall telling you his name.”  
  
“That’s what the Hokage’s archives are for,” Kakashi pointed out and then moved the fingers of his gloved hands to play with the set of tan ones that had been tapping against the tea cup’s side. For a passing moment, neither of them said anything, them both settling to watch how their fingers slowly rubbed, tapped and pressed against one another, pale skin against dark. That is, until one little finger, usually not any different than the others, caught the Rokudaime’s attention and the digit in question was lifted up for closer examination.  
  
More precisely, the primly cut, filed and painted fingernail that glittered faintly due to the semi transparent nail polish it had been treated with.  
  
“I saw Naruto and the others fooling around today at the Seventh District,” came the sheepish response to the unsaid question. “Up to no good again, I supposed at first, but then I saw all the academy students and civilians around them, and went closer to see what was going on. Turns out they were helping out a community who were living in one of those big apartment blocks. They were having a small courtyard party, apparently to celebrate the finishing of the construction work. I couldn’t refuse them,” Iruka explained in hopes of giving the other man some idea of what had occurred without being forced to actually articulate what he had to do with the tiny example of a recently graduated genin’s manicure skills.  
  
“You do have a weak point for those in need,” Kakashi agreed without looking away from the painted nail. “There’s even a small swirl of red here at the edge,” he then stated, mostly to himself, and gave the figure in question a short rub with his thumb. After giving a pensive hum, the hand the finger belonged to was lifted to the covered lips. Feeling the warmth of the mouth it was briefly pressed against made familiar emotions stir in Iruka’s chest. The next thing that was said against the headmaster’s fingers, however, send a new kind of whir passing through the man’s heart. “It’s usually perceived that the Hokage is the parent of all people in Konoha. In a sense, that is true. The young shinobi of Konoha, however, always need parental figures like you, whether or not they have a family of their own. Whether or not Konoha has a Hokage. I could have used someone like you earlier in my life.”  
  
“Well,” Iruka started with a small smile, and kami help him his cheeks probably never stopped burning when accompanying this particular man, “you do have me now.” Of course it could also have something to do with the way the jounin’s other hand was gently teasing his inner wrist and brushing its path all the way to his elbow.  
  
“And that is better, actually,” the tease in question answered with a wink, which, the faintly blushing tokujo then noted, was void of its usual provocative messages.  
  
The men stilled over the mood they then both felt lingering around them, regarding one another across the table while ignoring the long forgotten cup of tea and the dusk that dyed the sky with the red shades of fire in the horizon.  
  
“Of course,” Iruka then continued with a casually light voice, albeit he couldn’t help the mischievous grin forming on his face, “it’s never too late for the Rokudaime Hokage of Konoha to put an effort in supporting the young generations in their early careers.” At the wondering look given to him over their joined hands he couldn’t stop himself from flicking the scrutinized little finger against the other’s masked nose. “It is only one ryo per fingernail, you know.”  
  
“Maa,” the man drawled, and he knew he really wasn’t fooling anyone with the bored tone. “We could use a break. I know a good bar in that area.” With that he let go of the hand he had been holding, and the other half of him that wasn’t giddily preparing to leave the dusty office for good for the night was already thinking up the plots he could come up with to keep his diligent partner from dragging him back to the desk. However, had he looked up from the folders he was hastily putting away, the Rokudaime could have noticed the relieved and somewhat victorious look flashing in the tan tokujo’s eyes, for the man had thought exactly the same.  
  
By the time his companion had put all needed paperwork away, Iruka had already slid open one of the office windows. “Twenty ryos saying that every single shinobi in that bar has painted nails.”  
  
“We’re dealing with the Rookie Nine here, sensei,” Kakashi noted dryly as he hopped on the window sill next to his grinning lover. “It is inevitable.”  
  
“You do have a point,” Iruka chuckled then, his mood climbing higher than it had been a few moments ago when he felt the fresh air flowing into his lungs. Yet before he could jump his way down the Tower’s roof, a firm hold on his hand pulled his attention back to the jounin crouching next to him. Before he could further question the intention he saw in the steel gray eyes, a bared pair of lips brushed first against his knuckles and then his palm, only for a fleeting second, before the mask was back up and the older shinobi smiled at the tokujo who was blushing once again.  
  
Then again, Kakashi supposed he should have guessed the headmaster would reciprocate in some manner, as his hand holding the other’s was quickly taken by the tokujo’s free hand and then pulled to meet the man’s lips. In silence, he savored the sound of the younger man’s breathing and the barely-there warmth of the mouth pressing against the leather of his glove. As the man’s teeth nipped at the heel of his palm and he caught onto the suggestive look glinting in the cunning man’s eyes that had nothing to do with innocent physical displays of affection, he began to wonder. “You taught them how to use nail polish, didn’t you.”  
  
The bright smirk spreading across the full lips was as good as any confession. “The scent of Konoha’s most popular father figure is a formula of many mixtures. It was inevitable.”  
  
Kakashi could truly agree with that one. He also had a feeling that whole Konoha agreed with him.


End file.
